A new Covid outbreak blighting China is believed to be the dreaded Omicron variant which ruined the Christmas and New Years celebrations of millions of Brits last year.
First detected in November 2021 in South Africa, it quickly spread around the world, becoming the dominant strain of infection.
In Shanghai a new round of Covid outbreaks is feared to be Omicron - one of the most easily transferable variants of the coronavirus - with stringent lockdown measures introduced to fight it.
